And don't make eye contact.
I am an introvert. I didn't always know that about myself, because for most of my life I was told (by other people) that I was something else. It took me a stupidly long time to stop letting other people tell me what I was, or what I was supposed to be. If you are funny, or have a natural tendency towards performance - whether it's acting, music, comedy, dance, etc. - the general consensus is that you are an extrovert. You are a person who likes an audience; who loves being the center of attention. After all, why else did you get on that stage, right? You are always on.
I should now like to state, forever and always, that this assumption is uninformed, unenlightened, ignorant bullshit.
An introvert is, at heart, a person who enjoys being alone. And who, in truth, actually needs to be alone, and fairly regularly, in order to continue functioning as a member of society. An extrovert is simply a person who enjoys being around other people, and actually gets energized by all that interaction. My wife is that kind of person; I am decidedly not. I can kill whole evenings on the patio with a little whiskey (or a lot, if I'm being honest), some music, and nobody else at all. I don't just enjoy doing this; I need to do this. When I have gone too long being around lots of people, whether professionally or socially, and I don't get the chance to sneak off by myself and just be alone for a while, I will become an absolute bastard. Ask literally ANYBODY who knows me well. If you and I are ever at a gathering and it's been a couple of hours, and for whatever reason I simply cannot get away, or there is no place for me to slink off to and recharge, then in that situation there's no need for you to scan the room looking for the biggest asshole. It will always be me.
Now that I actually understand this about myself, I'm much less of an asshole these days. (There are some, no doubt, who will violently disagree with the previous statement.) If I am on a television or commercial set and we're at lunch, I don't bother trying to explain to anyone why I prefer to eat alone. If you understand it, then we have something in common. If you don't, what you think about me is no longer my fucking problem. (And what kind of self-centeredness must you possess to think that my not wanting to sit next to you at lunch has anything at all to do with you?)
Though some creatives are natural extroverts (and a good deal more are just straight-up attention whores), I'd be willing to wager that there are more of them like me than of the other stripe. They, too, need to occasionally be alone, and they will get cranky (or, in my case, at least theoretically homicidal) if anyone tries to intrude on that aloneness. This may be one reason I have, in my Middle Years, become fonder of writing as a means of creative expression. Most of my career has been about collaboration, and to a person like me collaboration is wonderful AND goddam exhausting at the same time. When I write, though, it's just my thoughts and me. (Don't get me wrong. That can also be goddam exhausting. And more than a little frightening.) I find I enjoy creative solitude more and more.
Or maybe I'm just turning into Groucho Marx: Don't look now, but there's one man too many in this room - and I think it's you."
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